Tres Espadas vs. "sean michael"

I am posting this in Trollshido because this is about a guy who's Bullshido moniker is "sean michael." He trolled our website ( www.tresespadas.org ) which we had left open to public comments (which we have now fixed.) He went so far as to say our latest kids video is the one that demonstrates the most proficiently skilled martial arts involved in Tres Espadas. (Hilarious as far as trolling goes, but this guy is acting like he's serious, so we don't want to entirely dismiss him yet.)

So this is about us calling out a maybe-not-intentional troll, and having his grievances with our club well documented, as well as any counter arguments we care to provide. It will get ugly, and I will certainly drop out of the conversation at some inappropriate time.

Our club is focused on the learning community, not on individual masters. We have a spar-in-front-of-camera, reflect on video footage, and do better next time on camera training methodology.

Our big inspiration for starting this club was Dog Brothers, and no we aren't on that level. No one is a black belt level instructor in the club. Several of the club members have been doing martial arts off and on since the 80's in various martial arts with a strong weapon focus. Other major influences are Dave Bird's Tae Sho Arnis system, bokenjitsu and knife-stabbing as is taught in vanilla Aikido, Doc Fai Wong's system, and the biggest influence on us technique wise is Lynn Thompson's videos.

Our club is generally open to the public, but is not concerned with teaching some sort of philosophy or "promoting the martial arts." It's very much about developing realistic self defense skills with weapons through sparring.

Another clarification here is most of our sparring is striking-with-weapons-only which we call "basic sparring." We have done some sparring with kickboxing moves, but generally a round kick hits a lot harder than a safety weapon, so that "advanced sparring" takes a back seat to make sure people get some weapon experience.

Ok, that's probably all the background info you need to enjoy the inevitable disaster that will be this thread. sean micheal has been known to take his time between posts, so don't be surprised if this takes a while to get started (or if this is in fact a total false start.)

My first question for you sean michael is very direct: what makes you qualified to comment on our technique? Under the right circumstances, we might be very interested in what you have to say. Those circumstances involve you posting video of YOUR TECHNIQUE.

Please post a link in this thread of some video of YOU sparring with weapons. I dare you to. I insist you do. Everything you say is suspect without this.

He's a troll in that he was spamming up our comments on our blog with his antithetical opinions. He sounds very sincere, and though his arguments aren't very cohesive, they are very consistent. Is he a Facebook newbie who has been reading and watching more than working out, or is he an experienced internet troll? Don't know.

Here is a quote from a visitor message he left on my profile:

I'm not typing this out of anger... The only experts were and are the individual Masters that allow the Arts to continue on in life, or the Arts would just die with them. Martial Artists should know their roots, or else they end up like Tres Espadas and wonder what went wrong. When you take more than one Martial Art and mix it together, like spaghetti, you might as well call it UFC.

So he's using "UFC" as a sort of derogatory term here, the context of what we are doing. We hesitate to use the term MMA for what we are doing because we don't think what we are doing is as serious as MMA, because we highly regard MMA.

So the problems he would have with the techniques in the following video would be anything that these techniques have in common with MMA, not our lack of grappling experience in the club:

If he's not an experienced internet troll, maybe his small world of martial arts opinions can be opened up to the wide world of Bullshido.net .

Traditionlists have been saying this for years and they are slowly going out of business. This is why you see the anger. This is petty **** and I can't believe it bothers you. I'm pretty sure you've been in worse threads on bullshido.

Yes, there are sincere people, that aren't trolls, that believe the TMA Hype.

Traditionlists have been saying this for years... I'm pretty sure you've been in worse threads on bullshido...

Indeed. It's not his opinion that bothers me, it's his persistence.

If in this thread I can cut through his MA dogma and get down to his real technique suggestions, I am interested in hearing what those actual suggestions are.

Some of what he has said suggests he may have actually been to a club meeting before. (For example he critiqued our logo, which is under development, and which has never been put online before.) I am interested in getting into figuring out as much about him as he is willing to volunteer about himself on this thread.

I realize how futile this is, but I do want to see if he can be converted to the idea of at least complimenting his TMA with experimentation, since he himself claims to study multiple weapon martial arts (though how many and which ones aren't yet clear.)

Hello, it's about time you replied, you took longer than I thought. So, my answer to your question, "What makes me qualified to comment on your technique?" The simple fact that you had stated that "Martial Art Techniques" are not useful in a real life situation. Now, my question to you is, what makes you qualified to teach Martial Arts or self defense to the general public, when Tresespadas has no certified instructors? Our online argument is not about technique, I know that you have now an interest in what I would express about technique, but my argument is about what you are "teaching" to the general public. Kinda look at it this way, If one person or people have Martial Art experience/background but are not certified to teach and then are not part of a school/dojo, or copy techniques of systems of Martial Arts and then charge people to learn/attend or whatever one may call it, well, that's simply stealing. Let's say, me, for example; since I am a certified instructor and am part of a Martial Art organization that teaches a system (which is patented) and if I decide to end my affiliation, learn other techniques or not, but rename what I do and then charge people to learn/attend or whatever I want to call it, I could get sued for copyright infringement if my Grand Master were to find out. However, I know that isn't your situation (or would it be?), but that's irrelevant to what i'm trying to explain. I like to be as specific and precise in my explanations as much as possible to avoid confusion. However though, some people misunderstand sometimes.

So, with that being said...... you mention that a round-house kick hits harder than a safety weapon. Ok, I agree with that statement, to an extent. However though, describe a "safety" weapon. To me, a safety weapon could be a wooden weapon and depending on that wooden weapon, it can hit harder than a round-house kick or a punch. Self defense with weapons- I look at a real life encounter with weapons as a life or death situation. What I do teaches the traditional way and the combative way of the system, the traditional way are the roots of the system that I partake. The formal step by step of instruction is our "dead technique" the we test it with our "live technique" or "sparring."

I used U.F.C as an example, since that's what society accepts as a Martial Art when they hear that word. When you break down the material in that sport, it's combined with traditional Martial Arts, except it's mixed and the roots are not being acknowledged/expressed or respected, for the most part.That's what U.F.C has evolved into today for the past 10-15 yrs. I can get deeper on what U.F.C exactly is today, but again, that is not our argument.

You say you don't promote Martial Arts. The term "Martial Arts" became that label at the beginning of the 1900's I believe, correct me if I'm wrong. Before that, it was known as "Self defense" because that's exactly what it is. I believe that you don't go out and promote a specific style/system of a Martial Art, but you are promoting Marital Arts without promoting it, does that make sense to you?

So, for my closing to this tonight, you say that your inspiration for your club is the Dog Brothers, the Dog Brothers mainly use Filipino Marital Arts, among other types, but mainly Filipino. They have taken their formal step by step instructions of Traditional Martial Arts and brought it to the level of real life/street usage. But then again, that's something that you don't believe is practical?